build-website-header
 

Web Pages Basics

Web pages are the fundamental building blocks of a website.

There are two aspects to consider when creating a web page:

  •  technical (html, meta tags, structure, layout, linking etc)
  •  non technical (copywriting and optimisation).
You need to be aware of both aspects in order to build good web pages.

It is also important to learn this process in distinct steps. Please don't try to make a well written ,search engine optimised web page complete with logo and site navigation from day 1.

All web pages use HTML (hypertext markup language) and although many sites say that you don't need to know HTML, the reality is that you need a basic understanding.

Therefore the first step in building a web page is getting a basic grasp of HTML and the best way of doing this is to make a basic page using HTML and notepad.

When making your pages you will need to name them. Page names are important, and you should understand page names and page extensions.

Web Page Structure

A web page consists of two components.

  •  A visible component (what the visitor actually sees)
  •  An invisible one (formatting, scripting components, meta tags etc)

Shown here in the schematic

web-page-structure-hidden-visible

 When examining the web page HTML this is what we see:

<html>
<head>
..............Meta tags go here
</head>
<body>
........Visible Page Content goes here

Scripts and comments can go anywhere here and are also hidden
</body>
</html>

The Hidden Web Page Components.

These components are not visible to the web page visitors and are used to provide information for use by web browsers and search engines (meta tags) or additional functionality (scripts).

They are also normally invisible in most web page editors (in normal mode). However most web page editors have a view source tab which reveals the actual HTML coding and the hidden meta tags, scripts and comments.

Because you need to view the HTML source code itself to see these tags, and in most editors to modify them, they are frequently overlooked. In addition, most editors will enter default information for some of the meta tags.

 

The Visible Web Page

The visible parts of the web page consist of the actual web page content, logo and the website/page navigation. A typical web page is show below:

web-page-structure-content

 

The navigation and logo areas are generally the same for all pages on the site ( web page templates)-See Understanding Page Layout.

The content is unique to each page.

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